To help get me into town at a decent time, I left camp at the ole 5:54am start time, one of my particularly fav. start times. Some very nice coloring of the sky was acting as a preview to the sun rising.Today felt like I was hiking a roller coaster, up and down, up and down. And for the most part, it was pretty steep too. As my title suggests, it reminded me particularly of the great Shivering Timbers wooden coaster at the legendary Michigan’s Adventure. It’s two parks for the price of one people, you really can’t beat a deal like that. When that thought entered my brain, I made another parallel between that specific coaster and the steep up and down hike I experienced today. Mainly that a good friend of mine, that shall remain unnamed, had a rough time going up the first hill back in the day due to some height fears. As the coaster train went click, click, click angling upward, he responded in unison under his breath…shit, shit shit. That’s a little how I felt today, rather upset and sick of the tough climb upward!

I’m being a bit dramatic of course, the hike was very, very nice at times actually. Here’s some sites as I walked solo this morning…Around 11:30am, I made it to Mirror Lake, which was super pretty…I did a quick 20 minute lunch and was about ready to go when I saw Cheer coming up the trail. I decided to wait and hang with her while she ate, which was a great decision! I’m not sure exactly why, but I felt a bit of anxiety that I needed to push on and get into town. I’ve mentioned this feeling a few times and maybe that’s hard for folks to get why I’d feel that way. I get it, it seems strange, but nevertheless I still find myself feeling the need to keep pushing sometimes.

Anyway, throughout most of lunch I had that going on. TW had joined by this point though, and kept asking me why I was acting odd. He saw that I wasn’t relaxed. In the end, we cured my stressfulness when I jumped into the lake! Such a great swim in the absolutely clear water!

After over two hours hanging by the lake, I ended up being the last one to get going again. The last stretch took some effort. Cheer and I finished it out together and for the last bit took the ski hill path down to town rather than the trail itself. We made our way to the Washington Alpine Club, which has been letting hikers stay for $20/night including some meals, laundry, and showers. I was a big fan of this place!After dropping our packs off, Cheer and I went into “town,” which is the ski resort village of Snowqualmie Pass. We’d been seeing comments about the curry at a little food truck/stand called the Aardvark Express and so that was our first stop! That’s a pineapple cake on top of the “Hurry Curry” creation and the Rainier beer was given for “free” when I first sat.We followed up our dinner with some Ben and Jerry’s from the gas station, both opting for the classic Phish Food. TW had gotten in to town first and we met up with him before walking the 0.7 miles back to the hostel. Calzone though had reached out via text to Cheer saying that she had a migraine this morning and wasn’t going to make it tonight. We felt bad for our friend and hoped that some sleep might help!The three of us had a fun night in the dining room, chatting, eating ice cream, looking at mountaineering books, and planning a make-believe (or maybe not?) future biking trip starting in Germany, going over the Alps through Austria, and making our way down and across Italy. A lovely night indeed.